WASHINGTON — Mass-going Catholics
continue to have substantially different voting preferences from Catholics who
are less active in their faith.

That’s one of the findings of exit
polls of Catholics who voted in the Nov. 4 presidential election.

As might be expected in a race where
a Democratic candidate won, in terms of attracting overall Catholic support,
President-elect Barack Obama easily outperformed the losing efforts of
Democratic candidates John Kerry and Al Gore in 2004 and 2000.

According to exit poll figures
reported by CNN and the Pew Research Center, Obama outpolled John McCain 54% to
45% among Catholic voters. By comparison, Gore edged George W. Bush 50% to 47%
in 2000, while Bush beat Kerry by a 52% to 47% margin in 2004.

But among those who attend Mass
weekly, a different picture emerges.

McCain led Obama 50% to 49% among
these active Catholics, compared to the 56% to 43% margin that Bush enjoyed
over Kerry in 2004.

Obama led McCain 66% to 32% overall
among Latinos, a community that is predominantly Catholic. McCain’s 32% support
among Latino voters represented a drop of 8% from the 40% of the Latino vote
Bush captured in 2000.

Among only white Catholics who voted
in 2008, McCain led Obama by a margin of 52% to 47%.

“Though precise figures are not
available, early exit poll data suggests that Obama performed particularly well
among Latino Catholics,” the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life commented in
a Nov. 5 press release.

“Overall, the national exit poll
shows that two-thirds of Latinos voted for Obama over McCain, a 13-point
Democratic gain over estimates from the 2004 national exit poll,” the Pew Forum
reported. “Meanwhile, Obama’s four-point gain among white Catholics [compared
with their vote for Kerry] is smaller than the gain seen among Catholics
overall. In fact, as in 2004, white Catholics once again favored the Republican
candidate, though by a much smaller margin [13-point Republican advantage in
2004 vs. five-point advantage in 2008].”

At an Oct. 22 panel discussion at
The Catholic University of America (CUA), Pew Research fellow Gregory Smith and
CUA politics professor John White both said Latino Catholics generally do not
make voting decisions on the basis of their religious beliefs,
The Tower, CUA’s newspaper, reported Oct. 27.

Because of that, Smith and White
said, only white Catholics are monitored when tracking Catholic voting patterns.
Other ethnic groups, including Latinos, vote for reasons other than following
Church teachings and usually support the Democratic Party, the two experts
said.

Some commentators, such as
BeliefNet.com editor in chief Stephen Waldman, have declared that the 2008
results indicate that in winning the presidency Obama substantially eroded the
so-called “God Gap.”

The “God Gap” refers to the
substantial lead Republicans have enjoyed in the last several American
elections among voters who are most active in their religious faith —
particularly among Evangelicals, but also among active Catholics.

But at best, the exit poll data only
partially substantiates Waldman’s post-election claim of an “Incredible
Shrinking God Gap.”

The Pew Research Center exit poll
data shows Obama’s biggest gains actually came among voters who are not
religiously affiliated at all. Among those voters, Democratic support surged by
eight percentage points to an overwhelming 75% to 23% margin.

That’s double the four-point swing
to the Democrats among all voters who attend church services at least once
weekly. Those voters remained in the Republican camp, by a 55% to 43% overall
margin.

The Kmiec Factor

But it’s clear that Obama had some
success in making inroads among active Catholics. And that happened despite the
fact that a large number of U.S. bishops stated before the election that voting
for a candidate with a pro-abortion platform as extreme as Obama’s is
incompatible with voting in accordance with a properly formed Catholic conscience.

Some commentators attributed the
shift of Catholics to Obama to counterarguments made by pro-Obama Catholics
such as Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec, who argued that voting
for Obama was not in any way incompatible with being a pro-life Catholic.

Kmiec’s arguments were denounced
publicly by Church leaders such as Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver and
Father Richard Neuhaus, editor in chief of First Things
magazine, for misrepresenting Church teachings regarding the responsibilities
of Catholic voters.

“Polls of Catholic voters prior to
the election suggested that Obama might win a majority of self-identified
Catholic voters,” Deal Hudson, director of InsideCatholic.com, said in a Nov. 5
commentary. “A more significant measure of Obama’s Catholic support will be the
percentage of regular Mass-attending Catholics who voted for him.”

Added Hudson, “But regardless of the
final statistics, it is clear that the Obama-Biden ticket received substantial
help from Catholics working for parishes and chanceries, as well as a number of
high-profile Catholic politicians and jurists.”